Millstone - Novel 02 Ch. 07

"I wouldn't expect you to. Sometimes, the evidence just isn't there, but I hadn't asked you here to give you a sense of my expectations. I want to talk to you about our little personnel problem in the department. Having made Sawyer a detective has filled one of our empty slots, but no one else is remotely ready for the badge, and they won't be for quite a while."

"Couldn't you just transfer someone from another city?"

He stopped in the corridor and turned to me. "This is Franklin. No detectives vie for the dubious privilege to work here. By the time a cop makes detective, they become even more protective of their reputations, and they fear working here would stain their record. The last request came from Detective Edgerton from Dallas seven years ago, so we usually promote from within. Beat and traffic cops come and go, but detectives are at a premium.

"I saw that handsome man of yours back there, and unlike Mr. Nevil before you, you're one of us. You belong here, but sometimes new arrivals find life in Franklin a little too overwhelming for them, and they move away. So, I need to hear this from you. You will stay, won't you?"

His question caught me off guard for some reason. We had spoken of topics related to work, but suddenly it felt personal, not in an unacceptable way, just something I hadn't expected. "A few weeks ago, when Max and I arrived, I hadn't known myself, especially when it comes to being 'one of us' as you put it; it's all new to me, but I can't imagine living anywhere except in Franklin with Max. So, I'm not leaving, but what does the department's personnel problems have to do with me?"

"I have that last slot to fill."

"You can't just make me a police detective like you did Albert," I said.

"No, you would have to be a cop, but for the moment, we have your consultations on a trial basis. I would like to make it permanent, more involved, and just consider the slot filled. Is that agreeable to you?"

"I enjoy helping the police department, but I do have an agency to run."

"Naturally, we would take into account your private business for when you have cases, and as for that, acting as our consultant—on retainer, as it were—would unofficially come with several informational perks which could come in quite handy for you."

"That's a generous, if not entirely legal, offer," I said.

"I'm merely bending the rules for the greater good, and I believe you could do the department a lot of good."

"I would be a fool to turnthat down, but I would insist on two things. One, make the contract with the agency, not just me. I want Max and Tucker in on this because I need them. And two, the contract must come with a termination clause. If either one of us is unhappy with the arrangement, at any point, if one of us backs out, the other needs to accept that."

"Mr. Roche has medical training and knowledge from which we could benefit, and as for Mr. MacEach, he has— shall we say—skills that have garnered considerable admiration within the department, so we would accept your terms. Have we a deal?" He held out his hand for me to shake, and I did. "Good," he said. "I'll have a contract written up this next week. For now, I need to get back to my husband." He backed away a little, readying to go, and as he did so, I noted that his eyes scanned me, and he nodded his head a little. "Yes...it's been a productive day." He turned and left.

My colleagues had left the forensics lab.

"We're headed to the conference room," Edgerton said to me.

Apparently, he had received a text that both the inquiries and autopsies were complete. Besides the conference table, the wall of the room held a monitor with the pathologist on the screen. I discovered later that the pathology lab was several blocks away attached to the city morgue. Joey Dvorak from the Minotaur set up the secure internet link to the lab when he worked for the city.

Once Albert entered the room and joined us at the conference table, he said to Edgerton, "I have Hernandez out looking for Gary Inman."

Edgerton nodded and directed his attention to the monitor. "We're all here doctor, what have you for us?"

"Let me begin with Marsh since his death is pretty straightforward. He had eaten a modest meal of fast food a couple of hours before his death. He had residue of the adhesive left behind from duct tape over his mouth, no tape was found at the scene, so presumably, the perpetrator took it with him. Using his fists, the assailant had beaten Marsh bodily and then strangled him to death.

"As for Beausoleil, last evening, he had drunk some wine and had sex with at least six different men, according to the DNA profiles of semen samples taken from the body. Most of those profiles were from unknown individuals, but one came from Javier Acuña. I understand he is a person of interest. Beausoleil's skin, including the bottoms of his feet, had the remains of dried well water and body wash containing tea tree oil. Minor contusions on his face may indicate that, at some point, someone grabbed him by the face with an open palm and pushed him hard enough to cause some bruising. When it comes to the head wound, he suffered a skull fracture, that, on closer inspection, is consistent with a forceful impact onto the granite floor. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the evidence suggests his head hit the floor first followed by the rest of his body. The impact was that significant. It caused an intracranial hemorrhage. Surprisingly, he lay slowly dying for two hours. Evidence suggests that his vital signs were seriously suppressed by that point, his heart barely beating, when someone drove a stake through his heart, which explains why we found such little blood from the wound."

"I'm a little iffy on some details, doctor," said Edgerton. "Which one killed him?"

"They both did...in their own way. The fall started a dying process from which he might have recovered, had he received immediate medical attention, but he hadn't. After two hours, he couldn't survive the injury. He had a significant amount of brain damage. The stake through the heart just finished him off."

"Okay," said Edgerton. "You know that I trust your expertise, so tell me, in your professional medical opinion, what do you think of what you've seen?"

"I appreciate that, detective," said the doctor. "While the injury in the fall could be viewed as accidental and the not calling for medical help as inexcusable, when it comes to the staking, you'll have to discover the answers on your own. It's too ambiguous. By the wound alone, I could never tell if malice lay in the heart of the one who staked him."

At that moment, Edgerton and I stared at one another, both of us thinking of Tucker. When the possibility existed that the staking happened postmortem, agreeing to his attending the memorial service seemed less dangerous, but that had changed, and so had my level of reluctance in agreeing to it. In the end, it would all come back to who would go to the service if he didn't, and we needed someone to go. Unlike with the housewarming, if Tucker went, he would be cut off from any assistance and probably in the company of a killer. Which I figured, given the opportunity, he would try to find; he seemed so eager to show me that he could do the job at the agency and that I could rely on him. I knew Tucker was a resourceful and surprising man, and he would want me to trust him. We decided to inform Tucker of the situation and allow him to make his own decision. Part of me hoped Tucker would back out, but he and Wade had a strong attachment to one another, and I think if Wade had asked Tucker to skydive, he wouldn't have hesitated to jump.